BIC CEO details the $400 million market for temporary tattoos

BIC CEO Gonzalve Bich joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the stationary manufacturer entering the temporary tattoo and skincare markets, collaborations with artists and celebrities, and the value of the temporary tattoo space.

Video transcript

EMILY MCCORMICK: Welcome back. You're probably familiar with BIC's pens, stationery, and lighters. But now the company is expanding into a new line of products. BIC just purchased Inkbox, the semi-permanent tattoo brand for $65 million. BIC CEO, Gonzalve Bich, joins us now. Thank you so much for your time. Tell us a little bit more about this acquisition. Because for many people, and I think myself included, when I think of BIC, I think about your office products. Why get into skin care? And why semi-permanent tattoos as your entry into the space?

GONZALVE BICH: Well, thanks for having me, Emily. I mean, we've been providing consumers, billions of consumers around the world for over 75 years, ways to express themselves. And so with the acquisition of Inkbox today and entering into the semi-permanent tattoo space, we're doing exactly that again but in a new, dynamic, fun, and very young way. People have been tattooing themselves for thousands of years, and thus all over the world in every culture.

But it was permanent. And so that choice was forever. Tyler and Braden, the founders of Inkbox, this Canadian startup, have created a really great way to commit to an idea for 10 to 14 days. We had created a brand called Body Mark that was one to three days. Here, we're a little bit further into our [INAUDIBLE] creative idea. BIC's always been about high quality products. And this is a very skin safe-- you'll see I did one this morning. And you see it just goes right into your skin. It's going to stay there for 10 days. So today, I chose a geographic motif to-- in two weeks, I might do something else.

We're entering into this as a second step with this acquisition, permitting us to grow globally and to really make BIC young and driven for consumer usage.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Help us understand too, because some of us, our association with BIC is, as Emily was saying, the stationery side. But you are global. Headquartered in Paris. Clearly, you're exposed to fashion on a global and luxurious scale. Where is this, do you think-- I realize the company you're acquiring is in Toronto. So this kind of skin art, and I love the fact it washes off after a bit, is that more popular in North America, South America? Is it global? Is it European? Where is the big game going to come from?

GONZALVE BICH: So today, the industry of non-permanent tattooing is about $400 million. Inkbox's sales are 2/3 in North America, one third the rest of the world. It started in Canada. It's a North American business. Now partnering with us, we're going to be able to grow our global scale. We have operations in Latin America, Africa, western and eastern Europe, and much further. So part of the synergies that we're going to be creating is driving international expansion, growing the different consumer usage.

And you talked about fashion. And Inkbox is absolutely partly that. We have collaborations with artists like Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, K-pop stars BTS, and many more. There's 10,000 tattoos available in catalog today. And if you can't find what you want in the catalog, we have a custom engine that allows you to do whatever you want.

You draw, you tattoo yourself for two weeks. And it's a great way to get into the space. 145 million Americans already have a tattoo. But those are permanent. And we think that there's tremendous expansion capabilities, being able to go into this semi-permanent space a little bit further than we did with Body Mark. So it's a combination.

EMILY MCCORMICK: I want to shift gears for a moment and ask for your core school and office supplies business, what have you seen in terms of how remote work and virtual learning has impacted demand for your products?

The last two years have been full of learning. 2020, everything was up and down. People weren't going to go back to school, not going to go back to school, remote work, remote learning. And so we all had to adapt and scramble. And it shifted a lot of the purchases to online. But you still had big, semi big, back to school. The good news is in 2021, people went back in stores, back to school was in full swing. And we saw growth, high single digit, low double digit market growth around the world, which is really important for the future of the industry.

What has fundamentally changed is how people use the products and connect with brands. And that's part of why we're acquiring Inkbox. It's young and has a very young core, female skewed demographic that's a perfect complement to BIC.

ADAM SHAPIRO: This may be a stretch here, but I'm thinking back to-- my mom was a smoker. 1,000 years ago, she quit. But had the BIC lighter. Could there be a day where she can do it yourself lighter with the kind of-- we're talking about skin art right now but maybe use that to put on to a lighter if you are somebody who uses a lighter?

GONZALVE BICH: Well thanks for the plug, Adam, because that day is today. You go onto designmybic.com and you can load any image as long as you have the copyright and it's an OK image. And we'll ship you those lighters for you. Now as you're showing also, we have some pretty cool artists who do collaborations with us. And last year, we did one with Snoop and Martha. And that did incredibly well. And we're really excited about that in '22 and the new TV commercials they might be shooting with us.

EMILY MCCORMICK: All right. Gonzalve Bich, BIC CEO, thank you so much.